No more T.O. means no controversy in Philadelphia

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The Philadelphia Eagles were looking on from afar last week and saying nothing other than the obligatory "I hope he's OK'' when Terrell Owens had either his accidental pill mixup or his attempted suicide in Dallas. And you won't hear anything else from the Eagles, because they're a class organization.

But I know what they were thinking.

"I told you so!"

Some of us still aren't sure whether Owens had an accident or was crying for help. (And, though I won't harp on it, let me say I certainly give more credence to the initial police report than I do the "I didn't attempt suicide'' admission by Owens the next day. Why have we all been so quick to dismiss the Dallas police report from officers on the scene? The report said Owens had attempted suicide, and said his publicist Kim Etheredge told police Owens had been depressed, and said that when officers asked Owens if he had attempted to harm himself, he said, "Yes.'' Yet just because Owens denied it all a day later and said he didn't remember being questioned because he was too groggy, he's getting a hall pass in many circles. Not in this one.) But what we all know is that, with all due respect to T.O.'s tremendous ability as a player, the Eagles are very glad to be back to being the old boring Eagles.

"Every year is different,'' said coach Andy Reid the other day. "Every team has such a different personality. But this team is one of the most enjoyable I've ever had. I've got such good senior leadership. Everybody gets along. Everybody works hard for one goal. The personality is so strong and so together. I guess it'd have to be to get over what we went through last year.''

The Eagles are 2-1. Their story is still in the formative stage, but we'll know a lot more about them 27 days from today. In that span, starting tonight, they're at home versus Green Bay, home against Owens' Cowboys (something tells me some drunk fans at a late Sunday game might yell some bad things at Owens, but that's just a guess), at New Orleans, at Tampa Bay, home with Jacksonville. With that kind of schedule, I could envision the Eagles being 7-1, 6-2 or, at the worst, 5-3 when their bye week rolls around.

I asked Reid what it was like to walk into the Eagles' training facility a year ago, and what it's like to walk in there now.

"It's a different feeling,'' he said. "Things weren't quite as smooth. You had to worry about who was getting along with who, who wasn't, and who was talking to who and who wasn't. There was just a general uneasiness. Hard to describe, but you could just feel it. This year I learned about the personality of the team very early. We had a long offseason, because we didn't make the playoffs last year. And I felt we needed to really get after it in training camp.

"A lot of the guys on the roster were new, or they'd just been here one year, and those guys only knew what happened last year, or they hadn't been exposed to how hard we work around here. So we went to camp and they knew I was going to challenge them in training camp. That's where the leadership came in. We practiced as hard as we ever have, and we never cut time off or canceled work. Like I said, we needed it, and our leaders didn't blink. It was like, 'We need this. Let's go.' And they were fantastic. The players went into attack mode. Never asked for a day off. You don't see that often in this day and age, when everyone on the team works and never questions anything.''

Said tackle Jon Runyan, in his seventh year with Reid: "He had his plan, and we bought into it. The thing with Andy is, he puts people on his team who love football. They just flat want to play football. And when you tell them camp is going to be hard work, they just go to work. It's fine. You know, people talk about leadership, but leadership is leading by example in my book. And we've got a lot of guys on this team who lead by example.''

By the way, Tuesday is the start of Dallas week in Philadelphia. Owens week. Because the Eagles play tonight, it's also a short week. And though a team normally would chafe at having less time to prepare for a team as good as the Cowboys, I sense the Eagles don't mind. That means there'll be less time for all the T.O. questions, and there will be a bunch.

"We'll like the short week,'' Runyan said. "We won't mind it at all.''